Footsteps of the Mind…

In a previous post I talked about the Case if the Vanishing Idea. How you can be struck by the lightning bolt of an idea but, by the time you’ve managed to find some way of writing it down, it’s disappeared in a puff of muse.

But, today, Circumstance was kind to me and an idea was handed to me all wrapped up with a now, in the presence of a PC. It not only gave me the goods for this post, but also for a new short story, Footsteps.

It was something I couldn’t ignore, to be honest. One of those anecdotes that slaps you in the face with the ingredients of a story. A very good friend of mine has bought, with her husband, a house. This house, however, is almost derelict and requires a huge amount if work. Once done, though. It will be an amazing building.

The house lies in nine acres of woodland – ash, oak, birch, beech and so many more. Deer roam in them there woods and a pond teeming with life has plopped itself right outside the door.

It’s not only the house that needs work. The woodland does. It encroaches too close to the building. The pond had a layer of algae not unlike the skin on a bowl of custard left just too long.

Well.

As they have day jobs, weekends are when they get stuck in to cutting, moving and cleaning.

This weekend was no different. Yesterday they built a small fire to burn off some of the excess logs. Later on my friend’s husband asked her to go check to make sure it was still contained, hadn’t spread or had burnt out. He works away so couldn’t do so himself.

This was half ten at night.

My friend drove to the fairly secluded road and stopped the car in front of the gate that barred the short lane along to the building. She had two choices:

1) Get out the car, open the gate, return to the car and drive down to where the fire was smouldering… or raging.

2) Run along to the fire, check it and run back.

Either way, a photo needed to be taken to show the current status. Either way it was 10:30 at night. Either way, it was dark. And secluded.

She opted to run. As she went there was movement. Rustling. Footsteps. She was already on her way. No turning back. Quick, take the photo. Quick, run back.

Oh no!

She’d left the headlights on. She was running straight into them! She couldn’t see anything!

Luckily, she made it back to the car, heart pounding in her throat and wondering if an change of underwear was required.

Now then. What would you do in that situation? Not go in the first place? Freeze?

And what would you do if you were a writer? Forget about it? Let it lie? Or seize it and turn it into a new story?

I chose the latter. I started the story today. Hopefully I may finish it tomorrow.

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About Me

I’ve been writing since I was knee-high to a giraffe. I don’t think I could quite hold a pen when I was nose to knee with a grasshopper, but I was pretty young when I started. It’s been my life-long dream to complete a novel. I had so many ideas and stories that needed to be told, I didn’t really have a choice, and 2011 is the year my first full length novel was finished.
Over the years, I’ve written many stories and poems, and won competitions with a few. I’ve been published in a multitude of magazines and have appeared on Sky TV debating the pros and cons of web based publishing as opposed to the more traditional kind, thanks to an online magazine I used to run – me, who produced an ezine from my home up against one of the main agents for a major literary house. Scary stuff! The magazine drew in submissions from all over the world and gave a showcase to those that either didn’t want to find magazines and other publishers or actually couldn’t. If I liked it, I published it, it was that simple.